A moment of tears, more moments of joy

A joyous walk down the aisle.

I didn’t cry.

At least, not coming down the aisle as I had been instructed by my daughter, the bride.

But I shed enough of tears as Father of the Bride during the weekend that saw my daughter Elizabeth become Mrs. Fournier.

The first set of tears came before Saturday’s wedding, at the rehearsal dinner, when a video of pictures, assembled by the Mother of the Groom and Mother of the Bride, was played.

As quickly as those images flashed on the screen is about as quickly as a lifetime with Elizabeth seemed at that moment. So quick. It almost felt I had left something behind -- something I should have done, something I could have done better, some life lesson I should have given.

It was a time travel of emotion, bouncing from past to present to future - looking at the images and thinking about when they were children, to seeing them now as marrying adults, to thinking ahead of them as parents.

No amount of levees were going to hold back the tears.

But that meant I was fine for the big reveal of the bride - Elizabeth on my left arm as the church doors swung open and we made our way down the aisle to a light show of flashing cameras. At that point, I was having way too much fun -- with all eyes on Elizabeth -- to think about crying.

The only other moment of tears came during the vows - as Elizabeth and John said their I do’s.

The rest of the day was too much of a party, too joyous a celebration to think about tears.

It’s amazing how an event -- for which there seemed to be such a long lead time, for which there was so much planning and discussing -- could go by as quickly as it did.

It’s taken me several days to return to the routine of being at home, being at the computer working.

Part of it was the emotional exhaustion. We all just needed some time to process the events, recover from them.

Part of it was constantly scanning Facebook looking for the latest posting of wedding pictures. I swear we crashed the Facebook server at one point because so many pictures were being uploaded at one time.

When I finished walking Elizabeth down the aisle, just before the hand-off to John, I leaned over, gave her a kiss and said, “Hold onto this moment forever.”

It was a moment of unbridled joy, one we could all do well to hold onto forever.